22 July

This is a good film about the darkest chapter of post-WWII Norwegian history. The disappointment for me was how the film failed to get into detail about the Norwegian police's many failures while the terrorist attack was progressing. What I recall from the aftermath while following news reports closely, was, for example: The police had two guards stationed ashore who had semi-automatic weapons readily available, yet they cowardly refused to intervene while listening to gun shots from Utøya island, and instead called for backup. Once police enforcements finally arrived, the inflatable boat they used almost sank, and it had to return to the shore to unload some policemen before heading toward the island. I wonder how many kids died only from that mistake. There were no police helicopters available, apparently because the pilots were all on vacation at the same time. The tourist camping ashore who had boats, were true heroes and used their boats to pick up kids from the lake who were swimming away from the island to save their lives. Breivik was shooting at swimmers desperately trying to escape. None of that was in the movie. And - Breivik called the police asking when they were going to arrive to get him. Yes. The terrorist thought the cops were so slow he called them! Unbelievable. Nobody was held accountable. No law enforcement officials or policemen had to face any consequences for the lack of response. Many, many lives could have been spared had Norwegian police been properly on the alert after the Oslo bomb went off.

I don't understand all the bad reviews...people complaining that the film didn't show a larger proportion of the mass shooting in the beginning of the film. Whats wrong with you people. Everybody knows it went on for much longer...but who in the right mind wants to watch children being murdered in such circumstances for an hour. The shooting time int he movie went on for long enough and it was very harrowing and very sad. A very good film

I remembered hearing about the event on the news and being shocked by it at the time, but the film gave a much deeper insight into the tragedy. I actually cried watching this portrayal of the attack on those poor children. The cast did an excellent job with the English dialogue, but I'd have been fine watching it in Norwegian with English subtitles.

Would've been so much better if they'd just made the movie in Norwegian. It's not believable. Norwegians acting Norwegians speaking English.

I am a long time fan of Greengrass, he isn't always making great films, but some times he brings some real good nailbiters which i greatly enjoy. For example Captain Philips and The Bourne Ultimatum. And you immediately see his fingerprints all over this one as well, with it's shaky camera movements and quick pacing.

The first half of this movie is pretty good actually, albeit the way it is cut together bothered me. The timeline in which all this happens feels like a couple of days, but it took months. The attack itself took hours, but yet it feels like minutes. It sort of brought me out of the story, because i know this story really well, being a Norwegian, and reading all about this, following the trial and the events surrounding all of this, it was really distracting to see that Greengrass was in a rush to get from one scene to the next.

I'm not saying the movie should have been 5 hours long to depict all of this more accurately, but at least make it clear how much time is spent between the scenes. The way this movie is cut, it felt like the trial started one week after the attack on the island.

So i kept hanging in there, i liked the acting, i liked the directing, but when we crossed the half-way mark i started to dislike a lot of the things i saw, the rush to get through the trial, the creative freedoms they chose to implement, the acting slowly got worse for some weird reason, and the spoken English also got worse the closer we approached the end. The actors in this film are mostly Norwegians, and it's painful to listen to when we can't make the language sound more authentic. But the weird thing is, it sounded more authentic in the first half of the movie.

Overall this movie does tell the basics about this dreadful event, i personally know people that was on the Island during this attack, and i think the movie pays proper respects to them, i do. But i also have to see this as a movie, which it is. And then I'm not so impressed, this is not Greengrass at his best, but it's a fairly good film overall, and the first half is really intense. This movie could easily have been 20-30 minutes longer, the content is there, no short cuts was needed to make this movie, it only makes the event less terrifying in my opinion.

6/10 - Fair